saving more today rather than a year ago?

Yes Casualguy I think there is probably a negative correlation between strip club visits and savings rate. Probably also true of illegal drug usage. In my own case, I can't really have much fun in a strip club until I have had enough to drink to blot out most of the common-sense values I acquired from my parents as a child. And yes, if you are reducing a debt that is a form of savings. I heard an interesting statement on NPR yesterday - on an individual basis, savings is a good thing, but on te macro level, savings is really hard on the economy. That is why Bush told us, after 9/11, the best thing we could do for the country was to go out to the mall and buy things.

I believe the "savings rate" may have increased slightly, primarily because people are nervous about the economy, since the leftists took charge of congress in January 2007, and the economy has since headed south. Add to that the fact that we kept those folks in charge, and elected a chief executive with no experience, and nervous feelings about the state of the economy are understandable...

I don't have any debt, but I'm still saving more just because it's a wise thing to do right now, because I have *clients* who are losing their jobs, and that can affect my income, obviously.

The big thing I'm doing now though is investing; securities are on sale, big time. Even if the Dow heads to 6000 (the extreme bearish position) putting money into investments maybe weekly or monthly (spreading it out for time averaging) will earn nice returns later... and don't even get me started on foreclosure deals ;)

I will say that between saving more and investing more, I'm just not interested in clubs. I mean, $20 dollars spent today is probably $40+ dollars I *won't* have 5 years from now... and no dance is worth $40.

O.

Ozy is wise...buying securities "sytematically" practically guarantees financial gain over a reasonably significant time, provided you are able to choose when to cash out... To "buy low and sell high," you've obviously gotta buy low, and now's a good time to do that if you are able.

I don't know about guessing when the best time to buy in the stock market. The great depression went on for years and people were constantly saying "it has bottomed out".

I personally thought GE bottomed out at $15 a share, but now it is much lower.

One investment I am thinking about making is RICK. It's a strip club company.

I don't know what your time horizon is. If you look at the two day indicator for RSI indicator on RICK, it's currently in an overbought condition where the RSI is over 70 percent which means it is currently overbought. If you're talking a longer term horizon like a year or two, I expect this Depression we're in to get significantly worse before things improve. I don't know how many are elliottwave fans but they project the downturn to last or bottom out possibly in 2012 before the next bull market starts to return.

On the bright side, you can probably make money with most stocks after the next major downturn. I see the SP500 along with others, eventually going down to the lower 600's this year sooner rather than later and then having a multi week rally before crashing to lower lows later in the year and continuing to drop further for the next 2 or 3 years. Unfortunately for most people the folks at www.elliottwave.com have been more right than wrong when it comes to forecasting the future for the economy, politics, you name it even if some people think they are too pessimistic. They aren't always correct in their daily patterns but they are pretty good at getting the larger overall stock pattern correct. They have some unique information called socionomics which I'm glad I discovered because it has really helped me along with other trading blogs I've read.

I'm still learning to trade myself. I'm not an expert but I know a whole lot more than I did last year.

While trading is interesting to study (I have a copy of Link's "High Probability Trading" sitting right here on my desk) I just don't have time to actually do it, so I just go the boring dollar-cost-averaging and diversify-across-low-fee-non-correlating-funds approach to investing.

I don't bother trying to time the market or pick things, I'm basically a "historical" investor, and I don't view investing in terms of gains per se, but in terms of wealth preservation and as a hedge against inflation. If I *do* actually make money, that's a nice cherry on top.

O.

Again, ozy shows wisdom...

That's a good approach if you don't have the time to study trading techniques. After almost a year of making trades I am starting to get much more successful. On average I was up 18 percent in January. In February so far, my position is currently up about 6 or 7 percent after getting back in the market today. I'm not trading options even though I would like to learn the ins and outs of that one day. I have learned 80 percent of options expire worthless. I also have learned there is a wealth of information to learn to be a good successful trader.

I spend a lot more time reading than I do trading. I may make only a few trades in a single month. I'm glad I started studying and reading about it last year. If I had left my 401K account alone, it would have lost 50 percent or more. I made one bad ill timed trade and lost 10 percent with the crazy market at the end of last year. Otherwise my 401K account was up for the year until October/November. I don't make as much money as some do so I decided to make up for it by making a few trades. Plus I think it's fun.